The invention relates to the precision bonding of metal and insulating strips to create a composite tape intended for use in the high speed automatic assembly of integrated circuit (IC) chips into hermetic housing.
My copending application, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,209,355, is titled MANUFACTURE OF BUMPED COMPOSITE TAPE FOR AUTOMATIC GANG BONDING OF SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES and discloses a composite tape process. At one stage of the disclosed process a copper strip is precisely bonded to an insulating strip. The bonding operation employs heat and pressure to activate an adhesive. In typical prior art laminating processes, roll bonding is common. In such an operation when two strips are to be precisely indexed it has been found that dissimilar materials tend to elongate at different rates thereby creating a growing registry error. For long strips this can be a serious handling factor. In some prior art approaches, tack bonding is followed by roll bonding. In this instance, the more flexible strip tends to bunch up between adjacent tacks and creates wrinkles that cannot be tolerated.